Study people's experiences, relationships, and institutions through fieldwork, qualitative inquiry, and usability research.
Eric Corbett / Design · Research · Teaching
I study how technology shapes people's lives. And design ways to change it.
I'm a design researcher and interaction design leader working across emerging technology, public institutions, and everyday experience. I investigate how people and systems interact, make and evaluate new possibilities, lead collaborative design work, and teach others to think critically through design.
How I work
Different settings.
One connected practice.
Sketch interactions, prototype alternatives, evaluate how they work, and revise the questions behind the brief.
Bring people with different expertise into the process, facilitate participatory work, and help research inform shared decisions.
Develop learning experiences, mentor designers, and make research useful beyond the project team.
Selected projects
Ideas made tangible.
VoiceNavigator ↗
Making invisible voice commands discoverable for people with limited hand dexterity.
Signs of the Smart City ↗
Using the design of urban sensor signage to question what transparency should mean.
Code Enforcer ↗
Designing a connected civic service around relationships, not just transactions.
Who gets to shape AI? ↗
Public education, civic governance, and the power people have to shape AI.
Beyond the portfolio
Design, research, and public learning.
At Google, I investigated public participation in AI and how community organizations and technology companies collaborate. At NYU, I contributed to the NYC AI Strategy and co-authored research on We Are AI, a peer-learning course that helps nontechnical audiences engage critically with AI.
Working principle
“Participation is not only a way to gather feedback. It can change whose knowledge matters—and what problem we believe we're solving.”
A principle guiding my design research practiceExperience across settings
From labs to public institutions.
Research Scientist
Interdisciplinary research within Google Research TASC on public participation in AI and community–industry collaboration.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Participatory design and civic technology research with public-sector and library partners.
Research, design, and technical practice
Accessible voice interfaces, digital civics, interactive machine learning, user research, and visualization.